


Bed Head

by azarias



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Cultural Differences, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-08 06:03:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21471238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azarias/pseuds/azarias
Summary: There's a serious problem in Gimli's love life. Being a clever, crafty dwarf, Gimli hits it with a stick to see if that fixes it.
Relationships: Gimli/Legolas
Comments: 8
Kudos: 308





	Bed Head

**Author's Note:**

> Rahne, thanks for the beta, and sorry about the first paragraph.

After months of trying, and lacking any better ideas, Gimli in desperation brought a stick to bed. He awoke with Legolas next to him, as he did most mornings these days, and pulled the stick from beneath his pillow and set expeditiously to work. Heavy sleep and morning blear could not stay a dwarf from a project he'd devised.

"What are you doing?" Legolas asked, a few frustrating minutes later. He blinked and rolled his eyes upward, trying to see Gimli, but Gimli put a hand on his pointy collarbone to keep him from sitting up.

"Trying to accomplish something. Go back to sleep."

"I don't sleep."

"Then go back to staring at the ceiling. This is hard enough without your chatter."

Legolas, now even more awake than he was before, turned over to look at Gimli, but stopped halfway and yelped when something tugged sharply at his hair.

"I said stay —"

Legolas grabbed his wrist, then the other, then scooted up very carefully to look at what Gimli held. "Is that a stick?"

"Yeah."

"In my _hair_?" His tone was that of an elf beginning to doubt reality.

"Obviously."

"I did not lie with you with a stick in my hair."

"No."

"So you, um. Why?" For it was obvious Gimli had gotten the stick himself, and brought it to Legolas's hair, for ... some reason.

Gimli let the stick go and shook his hands out of Legolas's grasp, flopping backwards with them above his head. "Never mind. Failed experiment." Rapidly came the feeling that it was a foolish attempt he never should have made in the first place. It had always been a bad habit of Gimli's to treat failure as intolerable, which made him a better warrior than a crafter. You could always hit the orc harder if it didn't go down the first time, whereas you might have to melt the steel down and start from the beginning if you biffed the forging. He tried to will the abashed flush in his cheeks to go away.

Huh. The ceiling was pretty interesting, if you followed the wood-grain and figured out what else you could make from it. No wonder Legolas didn't mind looking at it while he waited for Gimli to wake up. But an elf loomed over and interrupted him before Gimli could figure out if that plank should've been a table or an axe handle. Legolas glared.

"No, Master Dwarf, I think I really am owed an explanation. Is this some dwarfly way of telling me I'm unwelcome in your bed?" 

"It's your bed, and don't you joke." Gimli glared right back, annoyed at how the morning light contrived as usual to halo Legolas from behind. There wasn't a strategic prism in the window casting sunlight on the elf; Gimil knew because he'd checked. Light just _did that_ around Legolas. It framed the inky blackness of his hair and the oaken brownness of his skin, and instead of being absorbed by those dark colors it rendered all of them somehow golden, polished like a perfect stone.

The elf was relentlessly, obnoxiously beautiful, and having fallen in love with him Gimli could never unsee it.

"It's your hair," Gimli muttered when it became clear he would lose the staring contest. Elves were immortal, so _they_ claimed, and Legolas looked like an elf planning to sit there until Gimli answered him or the sun fell from the sky, whichever came first. Better for Gimli to surrender now than wait until he had to piss. He admitted, "I can't muss your hair."

"What?"

"Your _hair_," he repeated, and it came out in a wail. Gimli pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, rubbing until bright sparks appeared. Still embarrassed. He sighed and looked up at Legolas again, waving a hand at the problem. "No matter what I do to it, it's straight as a matron's morals. No matter how much I muss your hair, I can't _muss your hair_."

Legolas sat back, which gave Gimli a chance to sit up. "I thought that was a euphemism."

"It is!" Gimli shook his head. It was going to be one of _those_ days: half their relationship was explaining the obvious to one another. "I can hardly comb it back out for you if we never mess it up."

Instead of saying something dismissive and light, Legolas narrowed his eyes, thinking. After a bit, he said, slowly, "Combing my hair out is important to you." At Gimli's nod, he went on, "Because you would do the same for the dwarf maid you would have married had you not met me."

Gimli scowled. "I was never going to marry a _maid_, as I've told you a thousand times." 

It turned out that most elves, like most dwarves, were as likely to find a lad as comely as a lass, but Gimli himself had always bent firmly in the one direction. And he hadn't been lacking for lads who found him comely in return, thank you very much, and not just because his family was rich and his dad was a hero. But elves had a conviction about marriage being a machine for making children, and so Legolas kept forgetting that Gimli had never thought about it that way. Dwarves married when they were going to have kids, yeah, but not _only_ then. Most dwarves didn't even want kids, so it hardly mattered what pipes a married couple had between them. Elves were different.

Irritated, Gimli fished out the comb he'd stashed beneath his pillow beside the stick and started combing the bed-knots out of his own hair. Legolas made a sign of peace but not apology, and sat silently watching him until the scowl faded from Gimli's face. He was still holding the damned stick across his lap, reminding Gimli about his foolish plan, so that took a while.

When Gimli finished sectioning off his beard and had a neat, finger-thick braid down either side, Legolas reached out and gently stroked down the length of one and then the other. Gimli sighed and put the comb down. It did feel nice to be petted.

"Do these braids have meaning, then?" Legolas asked. "Something your kin would recognize?"

"Means I don't want my beard burned off at the forge or my head snatched bald by the orc I'm killing. Not all of us can run about Middle Earth with our hair flying free and only good wishes keeping it out of the way." He gestured at the bronze hair that still fell from his own head and halfway down his back, combed out but not yet tamed. It would be frizzy until he oiled it, and a convenient handhold for an enemy until he tied it tight. At the first opportunity it would fall into his eyes if Gimli let it. 

Legolas cocked his head this way and that, bird-like, looking Gimli up and down. "I've never seen a dwarf with loose hair except for you."

"I've never seen an elf buck naked except for you."

Legolas threw back his head, his hair falling like a dark river down to the mattress, undulating wave-like as he laughed. "A point, dear Gimli! But only because you do not spend enough time with elves. You accused me of being too willing to slip my clothes when we first travelled together, but I assure you I'm nothing compared to what my kin are like at home."

Of course Legolas knew very well the reason Gimli'd been such a prude, and of course he still found it funny. Well, it _was_ funny, considering everything that'd happened since. Quite simply, Gimli hadn't been sure, those first weeks of their journey in the Fellowship, what sex Legolas was. Nor, for that matter, how elves in general kept track of who had what beneath those flimsy robes and doeskins. Lord Elrond had addressed the elf as a son of old Thranduil King-in-the-Wood, and Aragorn had said of Legolas _he_, but that didn't mean much. Dwarf women went as men while traveling, and only dwarves ever noticed.

The result of this had been weeks of Gimli being very careful when the Fellowship stopped to bathe. His dwarvish modesty wouldn't have borne being caught in the altogether in front of a woman who wasn't his kin, even if she was a heathen wood-elf without any manners. Much circumspect investigation had been required before Gimli was convinced that Legolas truly was a he sort of elf. And now look at them. Both naked in a bed, because Legolas always took his clothes off before lying down with Gimli, no matter if they were in an amorous mood or not, and Gimli had gone to bed hopeful. 

Done laughing, Legolas looked Gimli over again and wetted his lips with his tongue, a gestured guaranteed to draw Gimli's attention. "I don't think I can make my hair do what you've been hoping for. I can ask around, but ..." He made an open-handed gesture, indicating the nothing he expected to learn. He was a thousand years old and knew everything there was to know about his own body. "But. I think I should tell you more about how elves brag about our conquests."

"That isn't the point," Gimli lied. He wanted to send this elf out into the world looking rumpled, and he wanted to make sure everyone knew who'd done the rumpling. And he wanted to send Legolas out perfectly set like a precious jewel, and everyone would envy that it had been Gimli's clever hands that shaped him. Except Legolas looked perfect all the time, damn it.

Ignoring the lie as it deserved, Legolas said, "We bite."

"Uh," said Gimli.

"Um," said Gimli.

"What," said Gimli, earning his name of Silvertongue.

What he expected Legolas to do was laugh, and maybe throw the stick at him, because it was Legolas's joy to discombobulate his dwarf. What Legolas did was smile, and very delicately run his tongue across his gleaming white teeth. They looked, Gimli noticed for the first time, very sharp indeed, like little blades.

"We _bite_. We bruise and mark each other, and sometimes we draw blood. And then we walk around in those flimsy clothes that so appall you, and everyone can see we've been well-used until it heals," and here he hesitated. Reaching out tentatively to touch Gimli's chest, he said, "Of course I wouldn't do that to you. I know that dwarves are different. And. And mortal flesh doesn't heal like ours. I wouldn't — you know I would never be rough with you. I only say that, well, that you might, if you want, with me ..." 

Gimli caught his hand and held it, rubbing at the knuckles and thinking thorough thoughts, because this here was both a surprise and an explanation. Elves were wild creatures, any fool could see, but Legolas had never so much as bruised Gimli's hip in passion in their lovemaking. Not that there was anything disappointing in the gentle way they'd gone about things so far, but Gimli had wondered. Legolas bruised him up quite well while they were sparring, and Gimli did his best to knock the elf about, too. But in bed Legolas was kind and patient and utterly, endlessly selfless, and Gimli hadn't guessed that it was because Legolas feared hurting him.

The realization was as charming as that perfect hair was frustrating. Well. So Gimli couldn't muss up his elf's hair. It seemed there were other things they could do that would be just as satisfying.

"Damned, ridiculous elf," he muttered, and he brought Legolas's hand up to his lips to press a hard kiss against its back. "Throw that stick away and let me show you what 'mortal flesh' can manage. And then —" he said, grinning near as sharply as Legolas had, "and then I'll teach you how to comb out my hair, once you've gotten it good and tangled up."

And that was what they did.


End file.
